9 Pitchfork Staffers on Their Favorite Karaoke Songs

Karaoke: a polarizing pastime. Books have been written about it, friendships have been forged over it, and actual leagues have competed for its glory. But you also probably know at least three people who, at the very mention of it, fake a stomach ache and flee to a quiet couch. Most of Pitchfork’s staff are no such shrinking violets when it comes to karaoke. Here are our personal favorites, crowd-tested to bring down the house.

Björk: “It’s Oh So Quiet”

One evening at Pitchfork staff karaoke, I found myself at a crossroads. I went to Twitter in search of an answer. “What song should I do at karaoke? Like I literally did My Bloody Valentine once so?” I tweeted. Almost immediately, I got a showstopper of a suggestion from Tagout Records founder Kris Petersen.

It turns out that “It’s Oh So Quiet” is my own perfect storm of a karaoke number. For starters, I love show tunes—the more jazz hands, the better. I also like to perform really physical songs, in hopes of disguising the fact that I am a terrible singer. “It’s Oh So Quiet” is about as Broadway as Björk gets, with those gigantic leaps from melodramatic shushing to big-band bursts that make me want to tap dance on the ceiling. I’ve never seen a song so immediately whip a room of drunken dweebs into irrepressible enthusiasm. The “ZING BOOM” gets the people going. –Quinn Moreland, Assistant Editor

Fountains of Wayne: “Stacy’s Mom”

Want to know the real Bad Place? Being a college freshman named Stacey, dating a frat boy and attending all boorish social functions requisite, while the hottest song in the country is a softcore sonnet to your mom. Fountains of Wayne, like Econo-Save, made The List for that one. But today, karaoke provides me the ideal environment to exorcise this trauma, by disseminating it onto my friends. I urge my sisters of same name: Sing “Stacy’s Mom” at karaoke. Revel in your captives’ shifts in expression, from glee to unease (in the second verse, reliably, at the towel line) then back to glee. The world owes you three months of your life back; have a shot and take them. –Stacey Anderson, Senior Editor

Bon Jovi: “It’s My Life”

Bon Jovi are as divisive as it gets, but in a karaoke setting, “It’s My Life” has a supernatural ability to bring a room together. It’s familiar without being too obvious, as almost two decades have passed since its omnipresent radio play. It’s not an especially difficult song to sing, but the high notes in the chorus offer opportunities to flex. It’s also an emotional minefield: Probably drunk, you’re tasked with confronting the fact that you’re not going to live forever. “I just wanna live while I’m alive,” you’ll bellow, and there’s no better room in which to shout these words than one where karaoke is happening. I originally picked the song as a goof, but the performance felt shockingly cathartic. I walked offstage and immediately received a genuine, uncomfortably long hug from a stranger. This is the power of Jon Bon Jovi. –Evan Minsker, Deputy News Editor

Dean Martin: “That’s Amore”

If you ask a person of Filipino descent about karaoke, there’s a chance they’ll let out a sigh and recount many tales of family parties, plug-in karaoke machines, drunken singalongs, and, of course, humiliation. For the baby boomer crowd, Rat Pack–era classics are a favorite at these events, forced onto the youth like hard candy dug up from the bottom of a purse. Sinatra’s “My Way,” for example, is a song so prominent and divisive in Filipino karaoke culture, it has led to a string of fights and murders in Manila.

When I was forced to sing at family gatherings as a preteen, I found myself drawn to Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore,” as its folksy melodrama and saccharine melody could be fun even when I wasn’t having any. I must confess no fondness for karaoke after a childhood spent doing it, but this song has stuck with me in a way few have. It makes me dream of a life as grand as a big pizza pie. –Kevin Lozano, Tracks Coordinator

Fiona Apple: “Criminal”

Karaoke is the sport of music nerds. So maybe asking for a music nerd’s song picks is like asking a football player, “What’s your favorite play?” (Listen, I don’t know about actual sports.) My point is, it’s impossible to read the room full of framed Katy and Britney posters before you’re in it, to know if your fellow belters will scream along as you come undone to Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” or if they will stare at you sort of uncomfortably, politely waiting for the song to be over. I’ve had to retire a number of my more all-purpose, any-room-will-do favorites in my vocal range (R.I.P. “Be My Baby”), but I do have three I don’t think I’ll ever hang up completely: No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” (a shouty classic for the ladies), Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” (which almost everyone still remembers), and Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” The last one is the ace in my back pocket, a song perfectly suited for the smokiest timbres of my voice and the most mischievous parts of my personality. Singing it outside the private confines of my bedroom, I feel oddly seen in the world. I have found that nailing the crooning bit at the end—even if you can’t go that high, humming Fiona’s expressive inflections works—is good for the soul. –Jillian Mapes, Senior Editor

Flipper: “Life”

I haven’t sung karaoke since an ill-fated night, over 20 years ago, at a dingy joint in Providence, Rhode Island called the Safari Lounge—where I learned, much to my chagrin, that Huey Lewis’ “Power of Love” lies miles outside my range. But I quite like the idea of tackling Flipper’s “Life,” in part because there’s no actual singing required, just a kind of queasy wail. It’s also a no-brainer to memorize, and I am terrible when it comes to lyrics. “Life! Life! Life’s the only thing worth living for,” goes its tautological refrain, repeated ad nauseam over the stumblingest, most fucked-up groove that hardcore ever produced. Neither Bruce Loose nor Will Shatter, who handled twin vocals on the 1981 song, were possessed of particularly powerful pipes; the effect is more of a nasal whine, the kind anyone could pull off, even me. Finding a karaoke machine that actually has the song on it, however, might be another matter. –Philip Sherburne, Contributing Editor

Soundgarden: “Fell on Black Days”

In the vein of taking karaoke far too seriously, I already wrote a piece here about my favorite karaoke song of all time, Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart.” I still think that choice holds true, but I’m now taken with the idea of doing “Fell on Black Days,” because it seems to be the only Soundgarden song that is both good for karaoke and attemptable for someone who doesn’t have Chris Cornell’s indefatigable pipes. Soundgarden karaoke is incredibly rare because Cornell’s voice is a fucking flamethrower in a true tenor register; I see folks limp through “Black Hole Sun” but have no idea what to do when he goes up the octave at the end, and they turf out. It sucks. He’s the Whitney Houston of grunge—and just as you really don’t want to do Whitney at karaoke, other than an incoherent group version of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” doing Cornell at karaoke is hubristic. You’re probably going to turf out, too.

But with “Fell on Black Days,” there are no guitar solos and there’s singing throughout. It’s just on this side of not too long, it builds to a great climax, everyone knows it but they don’t know they know it, and there are no insanely unsingable notes. I messed up the high parts once because I was a little too far gone, but I think it’s easily the most manageable Soundgarden song in a catalog of steel-coated, untouchable anthems. –Jeremy D. Larson, Senior Editor

New Found Glory: “My Friends Over You”

I recently discovered that New Found Glory have an unlikely number of titles in the karaoke books of New York City. “My Friends Over You” is a highlight from the Floridian mall-punk band’s classic 2002 record Sticks and Stones; it’s a studded-belt anthem about tossing aside romantic commitment, and it actually holds up. Of course, it’s a little cruel to the person whom its narrator did not mean to lead on, after a budding relationship got “too routine,” but it’s innocent enough. I used to revel in the second half of its hook: “Though you swear that you are true/I still pick my friends over you!” Now I enjoy its ridiculous preceding line—“You were everything I wanted/But I just can’t finish what I started”—because I get to destroy it at karaoke. No one has to “know” how to sing at karaoke, but doing pop-punk songs is a blast because you really don’t have to know. –Jenn Pelly, Contributing Editor

Usher: “Climax”

The thing about karaoke, for me, is that you don’t get to talk to people enough. Also, and probably not coincidentally, I’m not a very good singer. My repertoire is pretty limited. I usually have decent success with broadly recognizable, alternative-era songs that are easy to sing, like Blur’s “Song 2” or Green Day’s “Basket Case.” A recent-ish attempt at Lana Del Rey’s “High by the Beach” didn’t go so well. But once on a fluke, after Pitchfork’s holiday party, Evan Minsker and I serenaded each other with “Climax,” arguably the defining futuristic-R&B ballad of 2012 (a year teeming with futuristic-R&B ballads). I hope Evan won’t mind my bringing this up, but I mean, it was perfection. It would be futile for me to even attempt it again. –Marc Hogan, Senior Staff Writer